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'/J4.       A>^lOSANCElij)>  <^iUBRARYa^,       ^j\l-UBRARY<3r , 


^p  ti)c  ^amc  Slutijor. 


THE  LITERARY  REMAINS  OF  HENRY  JAMES. 
Edited,  wiih  an  Introduction,  by  William  James. 
With  Portrait.     Crown  8vo,  $2.00. 

HUMAN  IMMORTALITY.  Two  Supposed  Objec- 
tions to  the  Doctrine.     i6mo,  $1.00.   . 

HOUGHTON,   MIFFl-IN  &  CO. 
Boston  and  New  York. 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PSYCHOLOGY.     2  vols. 

8vo.     New  York;  Henry  Holt  &  Co.     i8go. 
PSYCHOLOGY.   Briefer  Course.   i2mo.  New  York: 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.     1892. 
IS   LIFE  WORTH    LIVING?     i8mo.     Philadelphia: 

S.  B.  Weston,  1305  Arch  St.     1896. 
THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE,  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

IN      POPULAR     PHILOSOPHY.        New  York: 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     1897. 


HUMAN  IMMORTALITY 

TWO  SUPPOSED  OBJECTIONS 
TO  THE  DOCTRINE 


BY 


WILLIAM  JAMES 

FROFBSSOK   OF   PHILOSOPHY   AT   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY,   AND 
INGERSOLL   LECTURER   FOR    1897-1898 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

(9ti)C  mtcxfiitit  pre??,  CambciDge 


OOFVBIGHT,  1898,  BY  WILLIAM  JAMBS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


SIXTH    IMPRESSION 


~3T 


THE   INGERSOLL  LECTURESHIP 


SLxtract  from  the  will  of  Miss  Caroline  Haskell  Ingersoll^ 

•who  died  in  Keene,  Cou7tty  of  Cheshire,  New 

Hampshire,  Jati.  z6,  i8qj. 

First.  In  carrying  out  the  wishes  of  my  late 
beloved  father,  George  Goldthwait  Ingersoll,  as 
declared  by  him  in  his  last  will  and  testament,  I 
give  and  bequeath  to  Harvard  University  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  where  my  late  father  was  graduated, 
and  which  he  always  held  in  love  and  honor,  the 
sum  of  Five  thousand  dollars  ($5,000)  as  a  fund  for 
the  establishment  of  a  Lectureship  on  a  plan  some- 
what similar  to  that  of  the  Dudleian  lecture,  that  is 
■ — one  lecture  to  be  delivered  each  year,  on  any  con- 
venient day  between  the  last  day  of  May  and  the 
first  day  of  December,  on  this  subject,  "the  Im- 
mortality of  Man,"  said  lecture  not  to  form  a  part 
of  the  usual  college  course,  nor  to  be  delivered  by 
any  Professor  or  Tutor  as  part  of  his  usual  routine 
of  instruction,  though  any  such  Professor  or  Tutof 
may  be  appointed  to  such  service.  The  choice  of 
said  lecturer  is  not  to  be  limited  to  any  one  religious 
denomination,  nor  to  any  one  profession,  but  may 
be  that  of  either  clergyman  or  layman,  the  appoint- 
ment to  take  place  at  least  six  months  before  the 
delivery  of  said  lecture.  The  above  sum  to  be 
safely  invested  and  three  fourths  of  the  annual  in- 
terest thereof  to  be  paid  to  the  lecturer  for  his 
services  and  the  remaining  fourth  to  be  expended 
in  the  publishment  and  gratuitous  distribution  of 
the  lecture,  a  copy  of  which  is  always  to  be  fur- 
nished by  the  lecturer  for  such  purpose.  The  same 
lecture  to  be  named  and  known  as  '*  the  Ingersoll 
lecture  on  the  Immortality  of  Man." 


849080 


PREFACE  TO   SECOND  EDITION 


O  many  critics  have  made  one  and 
the  same  objection  to  the  door- 
^  way  to  immortality  which  my  lec- 
ture claims  to  be  left  open  by  the  "  trans- 
mission-theory "  of  cerebral  action,  that  I 
feel  tempted,  as  the  book  is  again  going 
to  press,  to  add  a  word  of  explanation. 

If  our  finite  personality  here  below,  the 
objectors  say,  be  due  to  the  transmission 
through  the  brain  of  portions  of  a  preex- 
isting larger  consciousness,  all  that  can 
remain  after  the  brain  expires  is  the  larger 
Consciousness  itself  as  such,  with  which 
we  should  thenceforth  be  perforce  recon- 
founded,  the  only  means  of  our  existence 
i«*  finite  personal  form  having  ceased. 

But  this,   the   critics   continue,   is   the 


vi  Preface  to  Second  Edition 

pantheistic  idea  of  immortality,  survival, 
namely,  in  the  soul  of  the  world  ;  not  the 
Christian  idea  of  immortality,  which  means 
survival  in  strictly  personal  form. 

In  showing  the  possibility  of  a  mental 
life  after  the  brain's  death,  they  conclude, 
the  lecture  has  thus  at  the  same  time 
shown  the  impossibility  of  its  identity  with 
the  personal  life,  which  is  the  brain's  func- 
tion. 

Now  I  am  myself  anything  but  a  pan- 
theist of  the  monistic  pattern  ;  yet  for  sim- 
plicity's sake  I  did  in  the  lecture  speak  of 
the  "  mother-sea  "  in  terms  that  must  have 
sounded  pantheistic,  and  suggested  that  I 
thought  of  it  myself  as  a  unit.  On  page 
30,  I  even  added  that  future  lecturers 
might  prove  the  loss  of  some  of  our  per- 
sonal limitations  after  death  not  to  be  mat- 
ter for  absolute  regret.  The  interpretation 
of  my  critics  was  therefore  not  unnatural  ; 
and  I  ought  to  have  been  more  careful  to 
guard  against  its  being  made. 

In  note  5  on  page  58  I  partially  guarded 


Preface  to  Second  Edition  vii 

against  it  by  saying  that  the  "mother- 
sea  "  from  which  the  finite  mind  is  sup- 
posed to  be  strained  by  the  brain,  need 
not  be  conceived  of  in  pantheistic  terms 
exclusively.  There  might  be,  I  said,  many 
minds  behind  the  scenes  as  well  as  one. 
The  plain  truth  is  that  one  may  conceive  the 
mental  world  behind  the  veil  itt  as  individ- 
ualistic a  form  as  one  pleases,  without  any 
detriment  to  the  general  scheme  by  which 
the  brain  is  represented  as  a  transmissive 
organ. 

If  the  extreme  individualistic  view  were 
taken,  one's  finite  mundane  consciousness 
would  be  an  extract  from  one's  larger, 
truer  personality,  the  latter  having  even 
now  some  sort  of  reality  behind  the 
scenes.  And  in  transmitting  it  —  to  keep 
to  our  extremely  mechanical  metaphor, 
which  confessedly  throws  no  light  on  the 
actual  modus  operandi  —  one's  brain  would 
also  leave  effects  upon  the  part  remaining 
behind  the  veil ;  for  when  a  thing  is  torn, 
both  fragments  feel  the  operation. 


viii         Preface  to  Second  Edition 

And  just  as  (to  use  a  very  coarse  figure) 
the  stubs  remain  in  a  check-book  whenever 
a  check  is  used,  to  register  the  transaction, 
so  these  impressions  on  the  transcendent 
self  might  constitute  so  many  vouchers  of 
the  finite  -experiences  of  which  the  brain 
had  been  the  mediator ;  and  ultimately 
they  might  form  that  collection  within  the 
larger  self  of  memories  of  our  earthly  pas- 
sage, which  is  all  that,  since  Locke's  day, 
the  continuance  of  our  personal  identity 
beyond  the  grave  has  by  psychology  been 
recognized  to  mean. 

It  is  true  that  all  this  would  seem  to 
have  affinities  rather  with  preexistence 
and  with  possible  re-incarnations  than 
with  the  Christian  notion  of  immortality. 
But  my  concern  in  the  lecture  was  not  to 
discuss  immortality  in  general.  It  was 
confined  to  showing  it  to  be  not  incompati- 
ble with  the  brain-function  theory  of  our 
present  mundane  consciousness.  I  hold 
that  it  is  so  compatible,  and  compatible 
moreover  in  fully  individualized  form.    The 


Preface  to  Second  Edition  ix 

reader  would  be  in  accord  with  everything 
that  the  text  of  my  lecture  intended  to  say, 
were  he  to  assert  that  every  memory  and 
affection  of  his  present  life  is  to  be  pre- 
served, and  that  he  shall  never  in  scecula 
scEcidorimi  cease  to  be  able  to  say  to  him- 
self :  "  I  am  the  same  personal  being  who 
in  old  times  upon  the  earth  had  those 
experiences." 


HUMAN    IMMORTALITY 


T  is  a  matter  unfortunately  too 
often  seen  in  history  to  call  for 
much  remark,  that  when  a  living 
want  of  mankind  has  got  itself  officially 
protected  and  organized  in  an  institution, 
one  of  the  things  which  the  institution 
most  surely  tends  to  do  is  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  natural  gratification  of  the  want 
itself.  We  see  this  in  laws  and  courts 
of  justice ;  we  see  it  in  ecclesiasticisms ; 
we  see  it  in  academies  of  the  fine  arts,  in 
the  medical  and  other  professions,  and  we 
even  see  it  in  the  universities  themselves. 

Too  often  do  the  place-holders  of  such 
institutions  frustrate  the  spiritual  purpose 
to  which  they  were  appointed  to  minister, 
by  the  technical  light  which  soon  becomes 


2  Human  Immortality 

the  only  light  in  which  they  seem  able  to 
see  the  purpose,  and  the  narrow  way  which 
is  the  only  way  in  which  they  can  work  in 
its  service. 

I  confess  that  I  thought  of  this  for  a 
moment  when  the  Corporation  of  our  Uni- 
versity invited  me  last  spring  to  give  this 
IngersoU  lecture.  Immortality  is  one  of 
the  great  spiritual  needs  of  man.  The 
churches  have  constituted  themselves  the 
ofificial  guardians  of  the  need,  with  the  re- 
sult that  some  of  them  actually  pretend  to 
accord  or  to  withhold  it  from  the  individ- 
ual by  their  conventional  sacraments, — 
withhold  it  at  least  in  the  only  shape  in 
which  it  can  be  an  object  of  desire.  And 
now  comes  the  IngersoU  lectureship.  Its 
high-minded  founder  evidently  thought  that 
our  University  might  serve  the  cause  he 
had  at  heart  more  liberally  than  the 
churches  do,  because  a  university  is  a  body 
so  much  less  trammeled  by  traditions  and 
by  impossibilities  in  regard  to  choice  of 
persons.     And  yet  one  of  the  first  things 


Human  Immortality  ^ 

which  the  university  does  is  to  appoint  a 
man  like  him  who  stands  before  you,  cer- 
tainly not  because  he  is  known  as  an  en- 
thusiastic messenger  of  the  future  life, 
burning  to  publish  the  good  tidings  to  his 
fellow-men,  but  apparently  because  he  is 
a  university  official. 

Thinking  in  this  way,  I  felt  at  first  as  if 
I  ought  to  decline  the  appointment.  The 
whole  subject  of  immortal  life  has  its  prime 
roots  in  personal  feeling.  I  have  to  con- 
fess that  my  own  personal  feeling  about 
immortality  has  never  been  of  the  keenest 
order,  and  that,  among  the  problems  that 
give  my  mind  solicitude,  this  one  does  not 
take  the  very  foremost  place.  Yet  there 
are  individuals  with  a  real  passion  for  the 
matter,  men  and  women  for  whom  a  life 
hereafter  is  a  pungent  craving,  and  the 
thought  of  it  an  obsession  ;  and  in  whom 
keenness  of  interest  has  bred  an  insight 
into  the  relations  of  the  subject  that  no  one 
less  penetrated  with  the  mystery  of  it  can 
attain.     Some  of  these  people  are  known 


4  Human  Immortality 

to  me.  They  are  not  official  personages  ; 
they  do  not  speak  as  the  scribes,  but  as 
having  direct  authority.  And  surely,  if 
anywhere  a  prophet  clad  in  goatskins,  and 
not  a  uniformed  official,  should  be  called  to 
give  inspiration,  assurance,  and  instruction, 
it  would  seem  to  be  here,  on  such  a  theme. 
Office,  at  any  rate,  ought  not  to  displace 
spiritual  calling. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  these  reflections, 
which  I  could  not  avoid  making,  I  am 
here  to-night,  all  uninspired  and  official  as 
I  am.  I  am  sure  that  prophets  clad  in 
goatskins,  or,  to  speak  less  figuratively,  lay- 
men inspired  with  emotional  messages  on 
the  subject,  will  often  enough  be  invited 
by  our  Corporation  to  give  the  Ingersoll 
lecture  hereafter.  Meanwhile,  all  negative 
and  deadening  as  the  remarks  of  a  mere 
professional  psychologist  like  myself  may 
be  in  comparison  with  the  vital  lessons  they 
will  give,  I  am  sure,  upon  mature  reflec- 
tion, that  those  who  have  the  responsibility 
of  administering  the  Ingersoll  foundation 


Human  Immortality  5 

are  in  duty  bound  to  let  the  most  various 
kinds  of  official  personages  take  their  turn 
as  well.  The  subject  is  really  an  enor- 
mous subject.  At  the  back  of  Mr.  Alger's 
'Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Fu- 
ture Life,'  there  is  a  bibliography  of  more 
than  five  thousand  titles  of  books  in  which 
it  is  treated.  Our  Corporation  cannot  think 
only  of  the  single  lecture :  it  must  think 
of  the  whole  series  of  lectures  ift  futuro. 
Single  lectures,  however  emotionally  in- 
spired and  inspiring  they  may  be,  will  not 
be  enough.  The  lectures  must  remedy 
each  other,  so  that  out  of  the  series  there 
shall  emerge  a  collective  literature  worthy 
of  the  importance  of  the  theme.  This 
unquestionably  was  what  the  founder  had 
in  mind.  He  wished  the  subject  to  be 
turned  over  in  all  possible  aspects,  so 
that  at  last  results  might  ponderate  har- 
moniously in  the  true  direction.  Seen  in 
this  long  perspective,  the  Ingersoll  foun- 
dation calls  for  nothing  so  much  as  for 
minute   division  of   labor.      Orators  must 


6  Human  Immortality 

take  their  turn,  and  prophets  ;  but  narrow 
specialists  as  well.  Theologians  of  every 
creed,  metaphysicians,  anthropologists,  and 
psychologists  must  alternate  with  biologists 
and  physicists  and  psychical  researchers, — 
even  with  mathematicians.  If  any  one  of 
them  presents  a  grain  of  truth,  seen  from 
his  point  of  view,  that  will  remain  and 
accrete  with  truths  brought  by  the  others, 
his  will  have  been  a  good  appointment. 

In  the  hour  that  lies  before  us,  then,  I 
shall  seek  to  justify  my  appointment  by 
offering  what  seem  to  me  two  such  grains 
of  truth,  two  points  well  fitted,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken,  to  combine  with  anything  that 
other  lecturers  may  bring. 

These  points  are  both  of  them  in  the 
nature  of  replies  to  objections,  to  difficul- 
ties which  our  modern  culture  finds  in  the 
old  notion  of  a  life  hereafter,  —  difficulties 
that  I  am  sure  rob  the  notion  of  much  of 
its  old  power  to  draw  belief,  in  the  scien- 
tifically cultivated  circles  to  which  this 
audience  belong. 


Human  Immortality  y 

The  first  of  these  difficulties  is  relative 
to  the  absolute  dependence  of  our  spiritual 
life,  as  we  know  it  here,  upon  the  brain. 
One  hears  not  only  physiologists,  but  num- 
bers of  laymen  who  read  the  popular  sci- 
ence books  and  magazines,  saying  all  about 
us.  How  can  we  believe  in  life  hereafter 
when  Science  has  once  for  all  attained  to 
proving,  beyond  possibility  of  escape,  that 
our  inner  life  is  a  function  of  that  fa- 
mous material,  the  so-called  'gray  mat- 
ter '  of  our  cerebral  convolutions  ?  How 
can  the  function  possibly  persist  after  its 
organ  has  undergone  decay  ? 

Thus  physiological  psychology  is  what 
is  supposed  to  bar  the  way  to  the  old 
faith.  And  it  is  now  as  a  physiological 
psychologist  that  I  ask  you  to  look  at  the 
question  with  me  a  little  more  closely. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  physiological  sci- 
ence has  come  to  the  conclusion  cited ; 
and  we  must  confess  that  in  so  doing  she 
has  only  carried  out  a  little  farther  the 
common   belief  of  mankind.     Every  one 


8  Human  Immortality 

knows  that  arrests  of  brain  development 
occasion  imbecility,  that  blows  on  tht 
head  abolish  memory  or  consciousness,  and 
that  brain-stimulants  and  poisons  change 
the  quality  of  our  ideas.  The  anatomists, 
physiologists,  and  pathologists  have  only 
shown  this  generally  admitted  fact  of  a 
dependence  to  be  detailed  and  minute. 
What  the  laboratories  and  hospitals  have 
lately  been  teaching  us  is  not  only  that 
thought  in  general  is  one  of  the  brain's 
functions,  but  that  the  various  special 
forms  of  thinking  are  functions  of  special 
portions  of  the  brain.  When  we  are  think- 
ing of  things  seen,  it  is  our  occipital  convo- 
lutions that  are  active ;  when  of  things 
heard,  it  is  a  certain  portion  of  our  tem- 
poral lobes  ;  when  of  things  to  be  spoken, 
it  is  one  of  our  frontal  convolutions.  Pro- 
fessor Flechsig  of  Leipzig  (who  perhaps 
more  than  any  one  may  claim  to  have 
made  the  subject  his  own)  considers  that 
in  other  special  convolutions  those  pro- 
cesses of  association  go  on,  which  permit 


Human  Immortality  g 

the  more  abstract  processes  of  thought,  to 
take  place.  I  could  easily  show  you  these 
regions  if  I  had  here  a  picture  of  the 
brain. ^  Moreover,  the  diminished  or  exag- 
gerated associations  of  what  this  author 
calls  the  Kdrperfuhhphdre  with  the  other 
regions,  accounts,  according  to  him,  for 
the  complexion  of  our  emotional  life,  and 
eventually  decides  whether  one  shall  be  a 
callous  brute  or  criminal,  an  unbalanced 
sentimentalist,  or  a  character  accessible  to 
feeling,  and  yet  well  poised.  Such  special 
opinions  may  have  to  be  corrected  ;  yet  so 
firmly  established  do  the  main  positions 
worked  out  by  the  anatomists,  physiolo- 
gists, and  pathologists  of  the  brain  appear, 
that  the  youth  of  our  medical  schools  are 
everywhere  taught  unhesitatingly  to  be- 
lieve them.  The  assurance  that  observa- 
tion will  go  on  to  establish  them  ever  more 
and  more  minutely  is  the  inspirer  of  all 
contemporary  research.  And  almost  any 
of  our  young  psychologists  will  tell  you 
that  only  a  few  belated  scholastics,  or  pos- 


lo  Human  Immortality 

sibly  some  crack-brained  theosophist  or 
psychical  researcher,  can  be  found  hold- 
ing back,  and  still  talking  as  if  mental 
phenomena  might  exist  as  independent 
variables  in  the  world. 

For  the  purposes  of  my  argument,  now, 
I  wish  to  adopt  this  general   doctrine  as 
if  it  were  established  absolutely,  with  no 
possibility  of  restriction.    During  this  hour 
I  wish  you  also  to  accept  it  as  a  postulate, 
whether  you  think  it  incontrovertibly  es- 
tablished or  not ;   so  I  beg  you  to  agree 
with  me  to-day  in  subscribing  to  the  great 
,  psycho-physiological  formula :    Thought  is 
3  a  function  of  the  brain. 
\      The  question  is,  then.  Does  this  doctrine 
j  logically  compel  us  to  disbelieve  in  immor- 
\   tality  ?     Ought  it  to  force  every  truly  con- 
)  sistent  thinker  to  sacrifice  his  hopes  of  an 
hereafter  to  what  he  takes  to  be  his  duty 
of  accepting  all  the  consequences  of  a  sci- 
V  entific  truth  ? 

Most  persons  imbued  with  what  one  may 
call  the  Puritanism  of  science  would  feel 


Human  Immortality  ir 

themselves  bound  to  answer  this  question 
with  a  yes.  If  any  medically  or  psycho- 
logically bred  young  scientists  feel  other- 
wise, it  is  probably  in  consequence  of  that 
incoherency  of  mind  of  which  the  majority 
of  mankind  happily  enjoy  the  privilege. 
At  one  hour  scientists,  at  another  they  are 
Christians  or  common  men,  with  the  will  to 
live  burning  hot  in  their  breasts  ;  and,  hold- 
ing thus  the  two  ends  of  the  chain,  they 
are  careless  of  the  intermediate  connection. 
But  the  more  radical  and  uncompromising 
disciple  of  science  makes  the  sacrifice,  and, 
sorrowfully  or  not,  according  to  his  tem- 
perament, submits  to  giving  up  his  hopes 
of  heaven.2 

This,  then,  is  the  objection  to  immortal- 
ity; and  the  next  thing  in  order  for  me 
is  to  try  to  make  plain  to  you  why  I  be- 
lieve that  it  has  in  strict  logic  no  deter- 
rent power.  I  must  show  you  that  the  fatal 
consequence  is  not  coercive,  as  is  com- 
monly imagined ;  and  that,  even  though  our 
soul's  life  (as  here  below  it  is  revealed  to 


12  Human  Immortality 

us)  may  be  in  literal  strictness  the  function 
of  a  brain  that  perishes,  yet  it  is  not  at  all 
impossible,  but  on  the  contrary  quite  pos- 
sible, that  the  life  may  still  continue  when 
the  brain  itself  is  dead. 

The  supposed  impossibility  of  its  contin- 
uing comes  from  too  superficial  a  look  at 
the  admitted  fact  of  functional  dependence. 
The  moment  we  inquire  more  closely  into 
the  notion  of  functional  dependence,  and 
ask  ourselves,  for  example,  how  many  kinds 
of  functional  dependence  there  may  be,  we 
immediately  perceive  that  there  is  one  kind 
at  least  that  does  not  exclude  a  life  here- 
/O  after  at  all.     The  fatal  conclusion  of  the 
\     physiologist  flows  from  his   assuming  off- 
\     hand  another  kind  of  functional  depend- 
t     ence,  and  treating  it  as  the  only  imagina- 
\  ble  kind.^ 

/"  When  the  physiologist  who  thinks  that 
V.  his  science  cuts  off  all  hope  of  immortality 
)  pronounces  the  phrase,  "  Thought  is  a 
I  function  of  the  brain,"  he  thinks  of  the 
/    matter  just  as  he  thinks  when  he   says, 


Human  Immortality  i  ^ 

"  Steam  is  a  function  of  the  tea-kettle," 
"  Light  is  a  function  of  the  electric  cir- 
cuit," "  Power  is  a  function  of  the  moving 
waterfall."  In  these  latter  cases  the  sev- 
eral material  objects  have  the  function  of 
inwardly  creating  or  engendering  their 
effects,  and  their  function  must  be  called 
productive  function.  Just  so,  he  thinks,  it 
must  be  with  the  brain.  Engendering  con- 
sciousness in  its  interior,  much  as  it  engen- 
ders cholesterin  and  creatin  and  carbonic 
acid,  its  relation  to  our  soul's  life  must  also 
be  called  productive  function.  Of  course, 
if  such  production  be  the  function,  then 
when  the  organ  perishes,  since  the  produc- 
tion can  no  longer  continue,  the  soul  must 
surely  die.  Such  a  conclusion  as  this  is 
indeed  inevitable  from  that  particular  con- 
ception of  the  facts.* 

But  in  the  world  of  physical  nature  pro- 
ductive function  of  this  sort  is  not  the 
only  kind  of  function  with  which  we  are 
familiar.  We  have  also  releasing  or  per- 
missive function ;  and  we  have  transmis- 
sive  function. 


14  Human  Immortality 

The  trigger  of  a  crossbow  has  a  releas- 
ing function  :  it  removes  the  obstacle  that 
holds  the  string,  and  lets  the  bow  fly  back 
to  its  natural  shape.  So  when  the  hammer 
falls  upon  a  detonating  compound.  By 
knocking  out  the  inner  molecular  obstruc- 
tions, it  lets  the  constituent  gases  resume 
their  normal  bulk,  and  so  permits  the  ex- 
plosion to  take  place. 

In  the  case  of  a  colored  glass,  a  prism, 
or  a  refracting  lens,  we  have  transmissive 
function.  The  energy  of  light,  no  mat- 
ter how  produced,  is  by  the  glass  sifted 
and  limited  in  color,  and  by  the  lens  or 
prism  determined  to  a  certain  path  and 
shape.  Similarly,  the  keys  of  an  organ 
have  only  a  transmissive  function.  They 
open  successively  the  various  pipes  and  let 
the  wind  in  the  air-chest  escape  in  various 
ways.  The  voices  of  the  various  pipes  are 
constituted  by  the  columns  of  air  trembling 
as  they  emerge.  But  the  air  is  not  engen- 
dered in  the  organ.  The  organ  proper,  as 
distinguished  from  its  air-chest,  is  only  an 


Human  Immortality  75 

apparatus  for  letting  portions  of  it  loose 
upon  the  world  in  these  peculiarly  limited 
shapes. 

My  thesis  now  is  this :  that,  when  we  "n 
think  of  the  law  that  thought  is  a  function    / 
of  the  brain,  we  are  not  required  to  think  ■/ 
of  productive  function  only  ;  we  are  entitled  ^ 
also  to  consider  permissive  or  transmissive     j 
function.     And  this  the  ordinary  psycho-     \ 
physiologist  leaves  out  of  his  account.  y 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  the  whole  uni-  ^ 
verse  of  material  things  —  the  furniture  of 
earth  and  choir  of  heaven — should  turn 
out  to  be  a  mere  surface-veil  of  pheno- 
mena, hiding  and  keeping  back  the  world 
of  genuine  realities.  Such  a  supposition  is 
foreign  neither  to  common  sense  nor  to 
philosophy.  Common  sense  believes  in 
realities  behind  the  veil  even  too  supersti- 
tiously  ;  and  idealistic  philosophy  declares 
the  whole  world  of  natural  experience,  as 
we  get  it,  to  be  but  a  time-mask,  shatter- 
ing or  refracting  the  one  infinite  Thought 
which  is  the  sole  reality  into  those  millions 


1 6  Human  Immortality 

of  finite  streams  of  consciousness  known  to 

us  as  our  private  selves. 

"  Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 

Suppose,  now,  that  this  were  really  so, 
and  suppose,  moreover,  that  the  dome, 
opaque  enough  at  all  times  to  the  full  su- 
per-solar blaze,  could  at  certain  times  and 
places  grow  less  so,  and  let  certain  beams 
pierce  through  into  this  sublunary  world. 
These  beams  would  be  so  many  finite  rays, 
so  to  speak,  of  consciousness,  and  they  would 
vary  in  quantity  and  quality  as  the  opacity 
varied  in  degree.  Only  at  particular  times 
and  places  would  it  seem  that,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  veil  of  nature  can  grow  thin  and 
rupturable  enough  for  such  effects  to  occur. 
But  in  those  places  gleams,  however  finite 
and  unsatisfying,  of  the  absolute  life  of  the 
universe,  are  from  time  to  time  vouchsafed. 
Glows  of  feeling,  glimpses  of  insight,  and 
streams  of  knowledge  and  perception  float 
into  our  finite  world. 
\^  Admit  now  that  our  brains  are  such  thin 


Human  Immortality  ly 

and  half  -  transparent  places  in  the  veil. 
What  will  happen  ?  Why,  as  the  white 
radiance  comes  through  the  dome,  with  all 
sorts  of  staining  and  distortion  imprinted 
on  it  by  the  glass,  or  as  the  air  now  comes 
through  my  glottis  determined  and  limited 
in  its  force  and  quality  of  its  vibrations 
by  the  peculiarities  of  those  vocal  chords 
which  form  its  gate  of  egress  and  shape  it 
into  my  personal  voice,  even  so  the  genuine 
matter  of  reality,  the  life  of  souls  as  it  is 
in  its  fullness,  will  break  through  our  sev- 
eral brains  into  this  world  in  all  sorts  of 
restricted  forms,  and  with  all  the  imperfec- 
tions and  queernesses  that  characterize  our 
finite  individualities  here  below. 

According  to  the  state  in  which  the 
brain  finds  itself,  the  barrier  of  its  obstruc- 
tiveness  may  also  be  supposed  to  rise  or 
fall.  It  sinks  so  low,  when  the  brain  is  in 
full  activity,  that  a  comparative  flood  of 
spiritual  energy  pours  over.  At  other  times, 
only  such  occasional  waves  of  thought  as 
heavy  sleep  permits  get  by.     And  when 


1 8  Human  Immortality 

finally  a  brain  stops  acting  altogether,  or 
decays,  that  special  stream  of  conscious- 
ness which  it  subserved  will  vanish  entirely 
from  this  natural  world.  But  the  sphere 
of  being  that  supplied  the  consciousness 
would  still  be  intact ;  and  in  that  more  real 
world  with  which,  even  whilst  here,  it  was 
continuous,  the  consciousness  might,  in 
ways  unknown  to  us,  continue  still. 

You  see  that,  on  all  these  suppositions, 
our  soul's  life,  as  we  here  know  it,  would 
none  the  less  in  literal  strictness  be  the 
function  of  the  brain.  The  brain  would 
be  the  independent  variable,  the  mind 
would  vary  dependently  on  it.  But  such 
dependence  on  the  brain  for  this  natural 
life  would  in  no  wise  make  immortal  life 
impossible,  —  it  might  be  quite  compatible 
with  supernatural  life  behind  the  veil  here- 
after. 

As  I  said,  then,  the  fatal  consequence  is 
not  coercive,  the  conclusion  which  mate- 
rialism draws  being  due  solely  to  its  one- 
sided way  of  taking  the  word  'function.' 


Human  Immortality  19 

And,  whether  we  care  or  not  for  immortal- 
ity in  itself,  we  ought,  as  mere  critics  doing 
police  duty  among  the  vagaries  of  man- 
kind, to  insist  on  the  illogicality  of  a  denial 
based  on  the  flat  ignoring  of  a  palpable 
alternative.  How  much,  more  ought  we  to 
insist^^as^ jovers  of  truth,  wjien.Lhg,dgnial 
is  that  of  such  a  vital  hope  of  mankind! 

In  strict  logic,  then,  the  fangs  of  cere- 
bralistic  materialism  are  drawn.  My  words 
ought  consequently  already  to  exert  a  re- 
leasing function  on  your  hopes.  You  may 
believe  henceforward,  whether  you  care  to 
profit  by  the  permission  or  not.  But,  as 
this  is  a  very  abstract  argument,  I  think  it 
will  help  its  effect  to  say  a  word  or  two 
about  the  more  concrete  conditions  of  the 
case. 

All  abstract  hypotheses  sound  unreal; 
and  the  abstract  notion  that  our  brains  are 
colored  lenses  in  the  wall  of  nature,  admit- 
ting light  from  the  super-solar  source,  but 
at  the  same  time  tingeing  and  restricting 
it,  has  a  thoroughly  fantastic  sound.   What 


20  Human  Immortality 

is  it,  you  may  ask,  but  a  foolish  metaphor  ? 
And  how  can  such  a  function  be  ima- 
gined ?  Is  n't  the  common  materialistic 
notion  vastly  simpler  ?  Is  not  conscious- 
ness really  more  comparable  to  a  sort  of 
steam,  or  perfume,  or  electricity,  or  nerve- 
glow,  generated  on  the  spot  in  its  own 
peculiar  vessel  ?  Is  it  not  more  rigorously 
scientific  to  treat  the  brain's  function  as 
function  of  production  ? 

The  immediate  reply  is,  that,  if  we  are 
talking  of  science  positively  understood, 
function  can  mean  nothing  more  than  bare 
concomitant  variation.  When  the  brain- 
activities  change  in  one  way,  conscious- 
ness changes  in  another;  when  the  cur- 
rents pour  through  the  occipital  lobes, 
consciousness  sees  things  ;  when  through 
the  lower  frontal  region,  consciousness 
says  things  to  itself ;  when  they  stop,  she 
goes  to  sleep,  etc.  In  strict  science,  we 
can  only  write  down  the  bare  fact  of  con- 
comitance ;  and  all  talk  about  either  pro- 
duction or  transmission,  as  the  mode  of 


Human  Immortality  21 

taking  place,  is  pure  superadded  hypothe- 
sis, and  metaphysical  hypothesis  at  that, 
for  we  can  frame  no  more  notion  of  the 
details  on  the  one  alternative  than  on 
the  other.  Ask  for  any  indication  of  the 
exact  process  either  of  transmission  or 
of  production,  and  Science  confesses  her 
imagination  to  be  bankrupt.  She  has,  so 
far,  not  the  least  glimmer  of  a  conjecture 
or  suggestion,  —  not  even  a  bad  verbal 
metaphor  or  pun  to  offer.  Ignoramus, 
ignorabimns,  is  what  most  physiologists,  in 
the  words  of  one  of  their  number,  will  say 
here.  The  production  of  such  a  thing  as 
consciousness  in  the  brain,  they  will  reply 
with  the  late  Berlin  professor  of  physio- 
logy, is  the  absolute  world-enigma,  —  some- 
thing so  paradoxical  and  abnormal  as  to  be 
a  stumbling  block  to  Nature,  and  almost  a 
self-contradiction.  Into  the  mode  of  pro- 
duction of  steam  in  a  tea-kettle  we  have 
conjectural  insight,  for  the  terms  that 
change  are  physically  homogeneous  one 
with  another,  and  we  can   easily  imagine 


22  Human  Immortality 

the  case  to  consist  of  nothing  but  altera- 
tions of  molecular  motion.  But  in  the 
production  of  consciousness  by  the  brain, 
the  terms  are  heterogeneous  natures  alto- 
gether; and  as  far  as  our  understanding 
goes,  it  is  as  great  a  miracle  as  if  we  said, 
Thought  is  'spontaneously  generated,'  or 
*  created  out  of  nothing.' 

The  theory  of  production  is  therefore 
not  a  jot  more  simple  or  credible  in  itself 
than  any  other  conceivable  theory.  It  is 
only  a  little  more  popular.  All  that  one 
need  do,  therefore,  if  the  ordinary  materi- 
alist should  challenge  one  to  explain  how 
the  brain  ca7t  be  an  organ  for  limiting  and 
determining  to  a  certain  form  a  conscious- 
ness elsewhere  produced,  is  to  retort  with 
a  tti  quoque,  asking  him  in  turn  to  ex- 
plain how  it  can  be  an  organ  for  producing 
consciousness  out  of  whole  cloth.  For 
polemic  purposes,  the  two  theories  are  thus 
exactly  on  a  par. 

But  if  we  consider  the  theory  of  trans- 
mission in  a  wider  way,  we  see  that  it  has 


Human  Immortality  23 

certain  positive  superiorities,  quite  apart 
from  its  connection  with  the  immortality 
question. 

Just  how  the  process  of  transmission 
may  be  carried  on,  is  indeed  unimagina- 
ble ;  but  the  outer  relations,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  process,  encourage  our  belief.  Con- 
sciousness in  this  process  does  not  have 
to  be  generated  de  novo  in  a  vast  number 
of  places.  It  exists  already,  behind  the 
scenes,  coeval  with  the  world.  The  trans- 
mission-theory not  only  avoids  in  this  way 
multiplying  miracles,  but  it  puts  itself  in 
touch  with  general  idealistic  philosophy 
better  than  the  production-theory  does. 
It  should  always  be  reckoned  a  good  thing 
when  science  and  philosophy  thus  meet.^ 

It  puts  itself  also  in  touch  with  the  con- 
ception of  a  'threshold,'  — a  word  with 
which,  since  Fechner  wrote  his  book  called 
'Psychophysik,'  the  so-called  'new  Psycho- 
logy '  has  rung.  Fechner  imagines  as  the 
condition  of  consciousness  a  certain  kind 
of  psycho-physical  movement,  as  he  terms 


24  Human  Immortality 

it.  Before  consciousness  can  come,  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  activity  in  the  movement 
must  be  reached.  This  requisite  degree 
is  called  the  '  threshold  ; '  but  the  height 
of  the  threshold  varies  under  different  cir- 
cumstances :  it  may  rise  or  fall.  When  it 
falls,  as  in  states  of  great  lucidity,  we 
grow  conscious  of  things  of  which  we 
should  be  unconscious  at  other  times ; 
when  it  rises,  as  in  drowsiness,  conscious- 
ness sinks  in  amount.  This  rising  and 
lowering  of  a  psycho  -  physical  threshold 
exactly  conforms  to  our  notion  of  a  per- 
manent obstruction  to  the  transmission 
of  consciousness,  which  obstruction  may, 
in  our  brains,  grow  alternately  greater  or 
less.^ 

The  transmission-theory  also  puts  itself 
in  touch  with  a  whole  class  of  experi- 
ences that  are  with  difficulty  explained  by 
the  production-theory.  I  refer  to  those  ob- 
scure and  exceptional  phenomena  reported 
at  all  times  throughout  human  history, 
which   the    *  psychical  -  researchers,'   with 


Human  Immortality  25 

Mr.  Frederic  Myers  at  their  head,  are  do- 
ing so  much  to  rehabihtate ;  "*  such  phe- 
nomena, namely,  as  religious  conversions, 
providential  leadings  in  answer  to  prayer, 
instantaneous  healings,  premonitions,  ap- 
paritions at  time  of  death,  clairvoyant  vi- 
sions or  impressions,  and  the  whole  range 
of  mediumistic  capacities,  to  say  nothing 
of  still  more  exceptional  and  incomprehen- 
sible things.  If  all  our  human  thought  be 
a  function  of  the  brain,  then  of  course,  if 
any  of  these  things  are  facts,  —  and  to  my 
own  mind  some  of  them  are  facts,  —  we  may 
not  suppose  that  they  can  occur  without 
preliminary  brain-action.  But  the  ordinary 
production-theory  of  consciousness  is  knit 
up  with  a  peculiar  notion  of  how  brain- 
action  can  occur,  —  that  notion  being  that 
all  brain-action,  without  exception,  is  due  to 
a  prior  action,  immediate  or  remote,  of  the 
bodily  sense-organs  on  the  brain.  Such 
action  makes  the  brain  produce  sensations 
and  mental  images,  and  out  of  the  sensations 
and  images  the  higher  forms  of  thought  and 


26  Human  Immortality 

knowledge  in  their  turn  are  framed.  As 
transmissionists,  we  also  must  admit  this  to 
be  the  condition  of  all  our  usual  thought. 
Sense-action  is  what  lowers  the  brain-bar- 
rier. My  voice  and  aspect,  for  instance, 
strike  upon  your  ears  and  eyes  ; .  your  brain 
thereupon  becomes  more  pervious,  and 
an  awareness  on  your  part  of  what  I  say 
and  who  I  am  slips  into  this  world  from  the 
world  behind  the  veil.  But,  in  the  mys- 
terious phenomena  to  which  I  allude,  it  is 
often  hard  to  see  where  the  sense-organs 
can  come  in.  A  medium,  for  example,  will 
show  knowledge  of  his  sitter's  private  af- 
fairs which  it  seems  impossible  he  should 
have  acquired  through  sight  or  hearing,  or 
inference  therefrom.  Or  you  will  have  an 
apparition  of  some  one  who  is  now  dying 
hundreds  of  miles  away.  On  the  produc- 
tion -  theory  one  does  not  see  from  what 
sensations  such  odd  bits  of  knowledge  are 
produced.  On  the  transmission  -  theory, 
they  don't  have  to  be  'produced,' — they 
exist  ready  -  made  in   the  transcendental 


Human  Immortality  27 

world,  and  all  that  is  needed  is  an  abnor- 
mal lowering  of  the  brain-threshold  to  let 
them  through.  In  cases  of  conversion,  in 
providential  leadings,  sudden  mental  heal- 
ings, etc.,  it  seems  to  the  subjects  them- 
selves of  the  experience  as  if  a  power 
from  without,  quite  different  from  the  ordi- 
nary action  of  the  senses  or  of  the  sense- 
led  mind,  came  into  their  life,  as  if  the 
latter  suddenly  opened  into  that  greater 
life  in  which  it  has  its  source.  The  word 
'influx,'  used  in  Swedenborgian  circles,  well 
describes  this  impression  of  new  insight, 
or  new  willingness,  sweeping  over  us  like 
a  tide.  All  such  experiences,  quite  para- 
doxical and  meaningless  on  the  production- 
theory,  fall  very  naturally  into  place  on 
the  other  theory.  We  need  only  suppose 
the  continuity  of  our  consciousness  with  a 
mother  sea,  to  allow  for  exceptional  waves 
occasionally  pouring  over  the  dam.  Of 
course  the  causes  of  these  odd  lowerings 
of  the  brain's  threshold  still  remain  a  mys- 
tery on  any  terms. 


28  Human  Immortality 

Add,  then,  this  advantage  to  the  trans- 
mission-theory, —  an  advantage  which  I  am 
well  aware  that  some  of  you  will  not  rate 
very  high,  —  and  also  add  the  advantage  of 
not  conflicting  with  a  life  hereafter,  and  I 
hope  yon  will  agree  with  me  that  it  has 
many  points  of  superiority  to  the  more 
familiar  theory.  It  is  a  theory  which,  in 
the  history  of  opinion  on  such  matters, 
has  never  been  wholly  left  out  of  account, 
though  never  developed  at  any  great  length. 
In  the  great  orthodox  philosophic  tradition, 
the  body  is  treated  as  an  essential  condition 
to  the  soul's  life  in  this  world  of  sense  ;  but 
after  death,  it  is  said,  the  soul  is  set  free, 
and  becomes  a  purely  intellectual  and  non- 
appetitive  being.  Kant  expresses  this  idea 
in  terms  that  come  singularly  close  to  those 
of  our  transmission-theory.  The  death  of 
the  body,  he  says,  may  indeed  be  the  end 
of  the  sensational  use  of  our  mind,  but  only 
the  beginning  of  the  intellectual  use.  "  The 
body,"  he  continues,  "would  thus  be,  not 
the  cause  of  our  thinking,  but  merely  a 


Human  Immortality  2g 

condition  restrictive  thereof,  and,  although 
essential  to  our  sensuous  and  animal  con- 
sciousness, it  may  be  regarded  as  an  im- 
peder  of  our  pure  spiritual  life.^  And  in 
a  recent  book  of  great  suggestiveness  and 
power,  less  well-known  as  yet  than  it  de- 
serves, —  I  mean  *  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,' 
by  Mr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller  of  Oxford,  late 
of  Cornell  University,  —  the  transmission- 
theory  is  defended  at  some  length.^ 

But  still,  you  will  ask,  in  what  positive 
way  does  this  theory  help  us  to  realize  our 
immortality  in  imagination  ?  What  we  all 
wish  to  keep  is  just  these  individual  restric- 
tions, these  selfsame  tendencies  and  pecu- 
liarities that  define  us  to  ourselves  and  oth- 
ers, and  constitute  our  identity,  so  called. 
Our  finitenesses  and  limitations  seem  to  be 
our  personal  essence ;  and  when  the  finiting 
organ  drops  away,  and  our  several  spirits 
revert  to  their  original  source  and  resume 
their  unrestricted  condition,  will  they  then 
be  anything  like  those  sweet  streams  of 
feeling  which  we  know,  and  which  even  now 


^o  Human  Immortality 

our  brains  are  sifting  out  from  the  great 
reservoir  for  our  enjoyment  here  below  ? 
Such  questions  are  truly  living  questions, 
and  surely  they  must  be  seriously  discussed 
by  future  lecturers  upon  this  Ingersoll 
foundation.  I  hope,  for  my  part,  that  more 
than  one  such  lecturer  will  penetratingly 
discuss  the  conditions  of  our  immortal' 
ity,  and  tell  us  how  much  we  may  lose, 
and  how  much  we  may  possibly  gain,  if 
its  finiting  outlines  should  be  changed  ? 
If  all  determination  is  negation,  as  the  phi- 
losophers say,  it  might  well  prove  that  the 
loss  of  some  of  the  particular  determina- 
tions which  the  brain  imposes  would  not 
appear  a  matter  for  such  absolute  regret. 

But  into  these  higher  and  more  tran- 
scendental matters  I  refuse  to  enter  upon 
this  occasion  ;  and  I  proceed,  during  the 
remainder  of  the  hour,  to  treat  of  my  sec- 
ond point.  Fragmentary  and  negative  it 
is,  as  my  first  one  has  been.  Yet,  between 
them,  they  do  give  to  our  belief  in  immor- 
tality a  freer  wing. 


Human  Immortality  ^j 

My  second  point  is  relative  to  the  in- 
credible and  intolerable  number  of  beings 
which,  with  our  modern  imagination,  we 
must  believe  to  be  immortal,  if  immortal- 
ity be  true.  I  cannot  but  suspect  that 
this,  too,  is  a  stumbling-block  to  many  of 
my  present  audience.  And  it  is  a  stum- 
bling-block which  I  should  thoroughly  like 
to  clear  away. 

It  is,  I  fancy,  a  stumbling-block  of  alto- 
gether modern  origin,  due  to  the  strain 
upon  the  quantitative  imagination  which 
recent  scientific  theories,  and  the  moral 
feelings  consequent  upon  them,  have 
brought  in  their  train. 

For  our  ancestors  the  world  was  a  small, 
and  —  compared  with  our  modern  sense 
of  it  —  a  comparatively  snug  affair.  Six 
thousand  years  at  most  it  had  lasted.  In 
its  history  a  few  particular  human  he- 
roes, kings,  ecclesiarchs,  and  saints  stood 
forth  very  prominent,  overshadowing  the 
imagination  with  their  claims  and  merits, 
so  that  not  only  they,  but  all  who  were 


52  Human  Immortality 

associated  familiarlywith  them,  shone  with 
a  glamour  which  even  the  Almighty,  it 
was  supposed,  must  recognize  and  respect. 
These  prominent  personages  and  their  as- 
sociates were  the  nucleus  of  the  immortal 
group ;  the  minor  heroes  and  saints  of 
minor  sects  came  next,  and  people  with- 
out distinction  formed  a  sort  of  background 
and  filling  in.  The  whole  scene  of  eter- 
nity (so  far,  at  least,  as  Heaven  and  not 
the  nether  place  was  concerned  in  it) 
never  struck  to  the  believer's  fancy  as  an 
overwhelmingly  large  or  inconveniently 
crowded  stage.  One  might  call  this  an 
aristocratic  view  of  immortality  ;  the  im- 
mortals —  I  speak  of  Heaven  exclusively, 
for  an  immortality  of  torment  need  not 
now  concern  us  — were  always  an  61ite,  a 
select  and  manageable  number. 

But,  with  our  own  generation,  an  entirely 
new  quantitative  imagination  has  swept 
over  our  western  world.  The  theory  of 
evolution  now  requires  us  to  suppose  a  far 
vaster  scale  of  times,  spaces,  and  numbers 


Human  Immortality  ^^ 

than  our  forefathers  ever  dreamed  the  cos- 
mic process  to  involve.  Human  history 
grows  continuously  out  of  animal  history, 
and  goes  back  possibly  even  to  the  tertiary 
epoch.  From  this  there  has  emerged  in- 
sensibly a  democratic  view,  instead  of  the 
old  aristocratic  view,  of  immortality.  For 
our  minds,  though  in  one  sense  they  may 
have  grown  a  little  cynical,  in  another  they 
have  been  made  sympathetic  by  the  evolu- 
tionary perspective.  Bone  of  our  bone  and 
flesh  of  our  flesh  are  these  half-brutish  pre- 
historic brothers.  Girdled  about  with  the 
immense  darkness  of  this  mysterious  uni- 
verse even  as  we  are,  they  were  born  and 
died,  suffered  and  struggled.  Given  over 
to  fearful  crime  and  passion,  plunged  in  the 
blackest  ignorance,  preyed  upon  by  hide- 
ous and  grotesque  delusions,  yet  steadfastly 
serving  the  profoundest  of  ideals  in  their 
fixed  faith  that  existence  in  any  form  is 
better  than  non-existence,  they  ever  res- 
cued trimphantly  from  the  jaws  of  ever-im- 
minent destruction  the  torch  of  life,  which, 


^4  Human  Immortality 

thanks  to  them,  now  lights  the  world 
for  us.  How  small  indeed  seem  individ- 
ual distinctions  when  we  look  back  on 
these  overwhelming  numbers  of  human 
beings  panting  and  straining  under  the 
pressure  of  that  vital  want !  And  how 
inessential  in  the  eyes  of  God  must  be 
the  small  surplus  of  the  individual's  merit, 
swamped  as  it  is  in  the  vast  ocean  of  the 
common  merit  of  mankind,  dumbly  and 
undauntedly  doing  the  fundamental  duty 
and  living  the  heroic  life !  We  grow  hum- 
ble and  reverent  as  we  contemplate  the 
prodigious  spectacle.  Not  our  differences 
and  distinctions,  —  we  feel  —  no,  but  our 
common  animal  essence  of  patience  under 
suffering  and  enduring  effort  must  be  what 
redeems  us  in  the  Deity's  sight.  An  im- 
mense compassion  and  kinship  fill  the 
heart.  An  immortality  from  which  these 
inconceivable  billions  of  fellow  -  strivers 
should  be  excluded  becomes  an  irrational 
idea  for  us.  That  our  superiority  in  per- 
sonal  refinement   or    in    religious    creed 


Human  Immortality  ^5 

should  constitute  a  difference  between  our- 
selves and  our  messmates  at  life's  banquet, 
fit  to  entail  such  a  consequential  difference 
of  destiny  as  eternal  life  for  us,  and  for 
them  torment  hereafter,  or  death  with  the 
beasts  that  perish,  is  a  notion  too  absurd 
to  be  considered  serious.  Nay,  more,  the 
very  beasts  themselves  —  the  wild  ones 
at  any  rate  —  are  leading  the  heroic  life 
at  all  times.  And  a  modern  mind,  ex- 
panded as  some  minds  are  by  cosmic  emo- 
tion, by  the  great  evolutionist  vision  of 
universal  continuity,  hesitates  to  draw  the 
line  even  at  man.  If  any  creature  lives 
forever,  why  not  all  1  —  why  not  the  pa- 
tient brutes  ?  So  that  a  faith  in  immortal- 
ity, if  we  are  to  indulge  it,  demands  of  us 
nowadays  a  scale  of  representation  so  stu- 
pendous that  our  imagination  faints  before 
it,  and  our  personal  feelings  refuse  to  rise 
up  and  face  the  task.  The  supposition  we 
are  swept  along  to  is  too  vast,  and,  rather 
than  face  the  conclusion,  we  abandon  the 
premise  from  which  it  starts.     We  give  up 


5(5  Human  Immortality 

our  own  immortality  sooner  than  believe 
that  all  the  hosts  of  Hottentots  and  Aus- 
tralians that  have  been,  and  shall  ever  be, 
should  share  it  with  us  itt  secula  seculorum. 
Life  is  a  good  thing  on  a  reasonably  copi- 
ous scale  ;  but  the  very  heavens  themselves, 
and  the  cosmic  times  and  spaces,  would 
stand  aghast,  we  think,  at  the  notion  of 
preserving  eternally  such  an  ever-swelling 
plethora  and  glut  of  it. 

Having  myself,  as  a  recipient  of  modern 
scientific  culture,  gone  through  a  subjec- 
tive experience  like  this,  I  feel  sure  that 
it  must  also  have  been  the  experience  of 
many,  perhaps  of  most,  of  you  who  listen 
to  my  words.  But  I  have  also  come  to  see 
that  it  harbors  a  tremendous  fallacy  ;  and, 
since  the  noting  of  the  fallacy  has  set  my 
own  mind  free  again,  I  have  felt  that  one 
service  I  might  render  to  my  listeners  to- 
night would  be  to  point  out  where  it  lies. 

It  is  the  most  obvious  fallacy  in  the 
world,  and  the  only  wonder  is  that  all  the 
world  should  not  see  through  it.     It  is  the 


Human  Immortality  57 

result  of  nothing  but  an  invincible  blind- 
ness from  which  we  suffer,  an  insensibility 
to  the  inner  significance  of  alien  lives,  and 
a  conceit  that  would  project  our  own  inca- 
pacity into  the  vast  cosmos,  and  measure 
the  wants  of  the  Absolute  by  our  own 
puny  needs.  Our  christian  ancestors  dealt 
with  the  problem  more  easily  than  we  do. 
We,  indeed,  lack  sympathy  ;  but  they  had 
a  positive  antipathy  for  these  alien  human 
creatures,  and  they  naively  supposed  the 
Deity  to  have  the  antipathy,  too.  Being, 
as  they  were,  'heathen,'  our  forefathers 
felt  a  certain  sort  of  joy  in  thinking  that 
their  Creator  made  them  as  so  much  mere 
fuel  for  the  fires  of  hell.  Our  culture 
has  humanized  us  beyond  that  point,  but 
we  cannot  yet  conceive  them  as  our  com- 
rades in  the  fields  of  heaven.  We  have,  as 
the  phrase  goes,  no  use  for  them,  and  it 
oppresses  us  to  think  of  their  survival. 
Take,  for  instance,  all  the  Chinamen, 
Which  of  you  here,  my  friends,  sees  any 
fitness  in  their  eternal  perpetuation  unre- 


^8  Human  Immortality 

duced  in  numbers  ?  Surely  not  one  of  you. 
At  most,  you  might  deem  it  well  to  keep  a 
few  chosen  specimens  alive  to  represent  an 
interesting  and  peculiar  variety  of  human- 
ity ;  but  as  for  the  rest,  what  comes  in  such 
surpassing  numbers,  and  what  you  can 
only  imagine  in  this  abstract  summary 
collective  manner,  must  be  something  of 
which  the  units,  you  are  sure,  can  have  no 
individual  preciousness.  God  himself,  you 
think,  can  have  no  use  for  them.  An  im- 
mortality of  every  separate  specimen  must 
be  to  him  and  to  the  universe  as  indiges- 
tible a  load  to  carry  as  it  is  to  you.  So, 
engulfing  the  whole  subject  in  a  sort  of 
mental  giddiness  and  nausea,  you__drift 
along,  first  doubting  that_th£.,mass  can  be_ 
immi^ltal.  then  losing  all  assurance  in  the 
immortality  of  j^r  own  particulfir  petgorij, 
precious  as  you  all  the  while  feel  ajid  reaL 
ize~nie  latter  to  be7  ThisTlam  sure,  is 
the~attitu3e  of  mind  of  some  of  you  before 
me. 
But  is  not  such  an  attitude  due  to  the 


Human  Immortality  59 

veriest  lack  and  dearth  of  your  imagina- 
tion ?  You  take  these  swarms  of  alien 
kinsmen  as  they  are  for  you :  an  external 
picture  painted  on  your  retina,  represent- 
ing a  crowd  oppressive  by  its  vastness  and 
confusion.  As  they  are  for  you,  so  you 
think  they  positively  and  absolutely  are.  / 
feel  no  call  for  them,  you  say  ;  therefore 
there  is  no  call  for  them.  But  all  the 
while,  beyond  this  externality  which  is 
your  way  of  realizing  them,  they  realize 
themselves  with  the  acutest  internality, 
with  the  most  violent  thrills  of  life.  'Tis 
you  who  are  dead,  stone-dead  and  blind 
and  senseless,  in  your  way  of  looking  on. 
You  open  your  eyes  upon  a  scene  of  which 
you  miss  the  whole  significance.  Each  of 
these  grotesque  or  even  repulsive  aliens  is 
animated  by  an  inner  joy  of  living  as  hot 
or  hotter  than  that  which  you  feel  beating 
in  your  private  breast.  The  sun  rises  and 
beauty  beams  to  light  his  path.  To  miss 
the  inner  joy  of  him,  as  Stevenson  says,  is 
to  miss  the  whole  of  him.^^     Not  a  being 


40  Human  Immortality 

of  the  countless  throng  is  there  whosecon- 
tinuei  lifejsnoiLcalledfQr^jiid  called  for 
intensely,  by  the  ^consciousness  that  ani- 
mates the  being's  form.  That  you  neither 
realize  nor  understand  nor  call  for  it,  that 
you  have  no  use  for  it,  is  an  absolutely 
irrelevant  circumstance.  That  you  have 
a  saturation-point  of  interest  tells  us  no- 
thing of  the  interests  that  absolutely  are. 
The  Universe,  with  every  living  entity 
which  her  resources  create,  creates  at  the 
same  time  a  call  for  that  entity,  and  an 
appetite  for  its  continuance,  —  creates  it, 
if  nowhere  else,  at  least  within  the  heart  of 
the  entity  itself.  It  is  absurd  to  suppose, 
simply  because  our  private  power  of  sym- 
pathetic vibration  with  other  lives  gives 
out  so  soon,  that  in  the  heart  of  infinite 
being  itself  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as 
plethora,  or  glut,  or  supersaturation.  It 
is  not  as  if  there  were  a  bounded  room 
where  the  minds  in  possession  had  to 
move  up  or  make  place  and  crowd  together 
to  accommodate  new  occupants.    Each  new 


Human  Immortality  41 

mind  brings  its  own  edition  of  the  universe 
of  space  along  with  it,  its  own  room  to  in- 
habit ;  and  these  spaces  never  crowd  each 
other,  —  the  space  of  my  imagination,  for 
example,  in  no  way  interferes  with  yours. 
The  amount  of  possible  consciousness 
seems  to.be  governed  by  no  law  analogous 
to  that  of  the  so-called  conservation  of  en- 
ergy in  the  material  world.  When  one 
man  wakes  up,  or  one  is  born,  another  does 
not  have  to  go  to  sleep,  or  die,  in  order  to 
keep  the  consciousness  of  the  universe  a 
constant  quantity.  Professor  Wundt,  in 
fact,  in  his  '  System  of  Philosophy,'  has 
formulated  a  law  of  the  universe  which  he 
calls  the  law  of  increase  of  spiritual  en- 
ergy, and  which  he  expressly  opposes  to 
the  law  of  conservation  of  energy  in  physi- 
cal things.^i  There  seems  no  formal  limit 
to  the  positive  increase  of  being  in  spir- 
itual respects ;  and  since  spiritual  being, 
whenever  it  comes,  affirms  itself,  expands 
and  craves  continuance,  we  may  justly  and 
literally  say,  regardless  of  the  defects  of 


42  Human  Immortality 

our  own  private  sympathy,  that  the  supply  _ 
of  individual  life  in  the  universe  can  never 
possibly,  however  immeasurable  it  may. 
become,  exceed  the  demand.  The  de- 
mand for  that  supply  is  there  the  moment 
the  supply  itself  comes  into  being,  for  the 
beings  supplied  demand  their  own  con- 
tinuance. 

I  speak,  you  see,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  all  the  other  individual  beings,  real- 
izing and  enjoying  inwardly  their  own  ex- 
istence. If  we  are  pantheists,  we  can 
stop  there.  We  need,  then,  only  say  that 
through  them,  as  through  so  many  diver- 
sified channels  of  expression,  the  eternal 
Spirit  of  the  Universe  affirms  and  realizes 
its  own  infinite  life.  But  if  we  are  theists, 
we  can  go  farther  without  altering  the 
result.  God,  we  can  then  say,  has  so  in- 
exhaustible a  capacity  for  love  that  his  call 
and  need  is  for  a  literally  endless  accu- 
mulation of  created  lives.  He  can  never 
faint  or  grow  weary,  as  we  should,  under 
the  increasing  supply.    His  scale  is  infinite 


Human  Immortality  4^ 

in  all  things.  His  sympathy  can  never 
know  satiety  or  glut. 

I  hope  now  that  you  agree  with  me 
that  the  tiresomeness  of  an  over -peopled 
Heaven  is  a  purely  subjective  and  illusory 
notion,  a  sign  of  human  incapacity,  a  rem- 
nant of  the  old  narrow-hearted  aristocratic 
creed.  "  Revere  the  Maker,  lift  thine  eye 
up  to  his  style  and  manners  of  the  sky," 
and  you  will  believe  that  this  is  indeed  a 
democratic  universe,  in  which  your  paltry 
exclusions  play  no  regulative  part.  Was 
your  taste  consulted  in  the  peopling  of  this 
globe  .''  How,  then,  should  it  be  consulted 
as  to  the  peopling  of  the  vast  City  of  God } 
Let  us  put  our  hand  over  our  mouth,  like 
Job,  and  be  thankful  that  in  our  personal 
littleness  we  ourselves  are  here  at  all. 
The  Deity  that  suffers  us,  we  may  be  sure, 
can  suffer  many  another  queer  and  won- 
drous and  only  half -delightful  thing. 

For  my  own  part,  then,  so  far  as  logic 
goes,  I  am  willing  that  every  leaf  that  ever 
grew  in  this  world's  forests  and  rustled  in 


44  Human  Immortality 

the  breeze  should  become  immortal.  It  is 
purely  a  question  of  fact :  are  the  leaves 
so,  or  not  ?  Abstract  quantity,  and  the  ab- 
stract Heedlessness  in  our  eyes  of  so  much 
reduplication  of  things  so  much  alike,  have 
no  connection  with  the  subject.  For  big- 
ness and  number  and  generic  similarity 
are  only  manners  of  our  finite  way  of  think- 
ing ;  and,  considered  in  itself  and  apart 
from  our  imagination,  one  scale  of  dimen- 
sions and  of  numbers  for  the  Universe  is 
no  more  miraculous  or  inconceivable  than 
another,  the  moment  you  grant  to  a  uni- 
verse the  liberty  to  be  at  all,  in  place  of  the 
Non-entity  that  might  conceivably  have 
reigned. 

The  heart  of  being  can  have  no  exclu- 
sions akin  to  those  which  our  poor  little 
hearts  set  up.  The  inner  significance  of 
other  lives  exceeds  all  our  powers  of  sym- 
pathy and  insight.  If  we  feel  a  signifi- 
cance in  our  own  life  which  would  lead  us 
spontaneously  to  claim  its  perpetuity,  let 
us  be  at  least  tolerant  of  like  claims  made 


Human  Immortality  4^ 

by  other  lives,  however  numerous,  however 
unideal  they  may  seem  to  us  to  be.  Let 
us  at  any  rate  not  decide  adversely  on  our 
own  claim,  whose  grounds  we  feel  directly, 
because  we  cannot  decide  favorably  on  the 
alien  claims,  whose  grounds  we  cannot  feel 
at  all.  That  would  be  letting  blindness 
lay  down  the  law  to  sight. 


NOTES 


Note  i,  page  9. 
The  gaps  between  the  centres  first  recognized  as 
motor  and  sensory  —  gaps  which  form  in  man  two 
thirds  of  the  surface  of  the  hemispheres  —  are  thus 
positively  interpreted  by  Flechsig  as  intellectual 
centres  strictly  so  called.  [Compare  his  Gehirn 
uJid  Seele,  2te  Ausgabe,  1896,  p.  23.]  They  have, 
he  considers,  a  common  type  of  microscopic  struc- 
ture ;  and  the  fibres  connected  with  them  are  a 
month  later  in  gaining  their  medullary  sheath  than 
are  the  fibres  connected  with  the  other  centres. 
When  disordered,  they  are  the  starting-point  of  the 
insanities,  properly  so  called.  Already  Wernicke 
had  defined  insanity  as  disease  of  the  organ  of  asso- 
ciation, without  so  definitely  pretending  to  circum- 
scribe the  latter  —  compare  his  Grundriss  der  Psy- 
chiatric, 1894,  p.  7.  Flechsig  goes  so  far  as  to  say 
that  he  finds  a  difference  of  symptoms  in  general  par- 
alytics according  as  their  frontal  or  their  more  poste- 
rior association-centres  are  diseased.    Where  it  is 


48  Notes 

the  frontal  centres,  the  patient's  consciousness  of  self 
is  more  deranged  than  is  his  perception  of  purely 
objective  relations.  Where  the  posterior  associa- 
tive regions  suffer,  it  is  rather  the  patient's  system 
of  objective  ideas  that  undergoes  disintegration 
(loc.  cit.  pp.  89-91).  In  rodents  Flechsig  thinks 
there  is  a  complete  absence  of  association-centres, 
—  the  sensory  centres  touch  each  other.  In  car- 
nivora  and  the  low^er  monkeys  the  latter  centres 
still  exceed  the  association -centres  in  volume, 
Only  in  the  katarhinal  apes  do  we  begin  to  find 
anything  like  the  human  type  (p.  84). 

In  his  little  pamphlet,  Die  Grenzen  gets  tiger 
Gesundheit  und  Krankheit,  Leipzig,  1896,  Flech- 
sig ascribes  the  moral  insensibility  which  is  found 
in  certain  criminals  to  a  diminution  of  internal 
pain-feeling  due  to  degeneration  of  the  '  Korper- 
fiihlsphare,'  that  extensive  anterior  region  first 
so  named  by  Munk,  in  which  he  lays  the  seat  of 
all  the  emotions  and  of  the  consciousness  of  self 
\Gehirn  U7id  Seele,  pp.  62-68 ;  die  Grenzen,  etc., 
pp.  31-39, 48].  —  I  give  these  references  to  Flechsig 
for  concreteness'  sake,  not  because  his  views  are 
irreversibly  made  out. 

Note  2,  page  11. 

So  widespread  is  this  conclusion  in  positivistic 
circles,  so  abundantly  is  it  expressed  in  conversa- 


Notes  4g 

tion,  and  so  frequently  implied  in  things  that  are 
written,  that  I  confess  that  my  surprise  was  great 
when  I  came  to  look  into  books  for  a  passage 
explicitly  denying  immortality  on  physiological 
grounds,  which  I  might  quote  to  make  my  text 
more  concrete.  I  was  unable  to  find  anything 
blunt  and  distinct  enough  to  serve.  I  looked 
through  all  the  books  that  would  naturally  suggest 
themselves,  with  no  effect ;  and  I  vainly  asked  vari- 
ous psychological  colleagues.  And  yet  I  should  al- 
most have  been  ready  to  take  oath  that  I  had  read 
several  such  passages  of  the  most  categoric  sort 
within  the  last  decade.  Very  likely  this  is  a  false 
impression,  and  it  may  be  with  this  opinion  as  with 
many  others.  The  atmosphere  is  full  of  them ; 
many  a  writer's  pages  logically  presuppose  and 
involve  them ;  yet,  if  you  wish  to  refer  a  student 
to  an  express  and  radical  statement  that  he  may 
employ  as  a  text  to  comment  on,  you  find  almost 
nothing  that  will  do.  In  the  present  case  there 
are  plenty  of  passages  in  which,  in  a  general  way, 
mind  is  said  to  be  conterminous  with  brain-func- 
tion, but  hardly  one  in  which  the  author  thereupon 
explicitly  denies  the  possibility  of  immortality. 
The  best  one  I  have  found  is  perhaps  this :  "  Not 
only  consciousness,  but  every  stirring  of  life,  de- 
pends on  functions  that  go  out  like  a  flame  when 
nourishment  is  cut  off.  .  .  .  The  phenomena  of 


50  Notes 

consciousness  correspond,  element  for  element,  to 
the  operations  of  special  parts  of  the  brain.  .  .  . 
The  destruction  of  any  piece  of  the  apparatus  in- 
volves the  loss  of  some  one  or  other  of  the  vital 
operations ;  and  the  consequence  is  that,  as  far  as 
life  extends,  we  have  before  us  only  an  organic 
function,  not  a  Ding-an-sich,  or  an  expression  of 
that  imaginary  entity  the  Soul.  This  fundamental 
proposition  .  .  .  carries  with  it  the  denial  of  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  since,  where  no  soul  exists, 
its  mortality  or  immortality  cannot  be  raised  as 
a  question.  .  •  .  The  function  fills  its  time,  —  the 
flame  illuminates  and  therein  gives  out  its  whole 
being.  That  is  all ;  and  verily  that  is  enough.  .  .  . 
Sensation  has  its  definite  organic  conditions,  and, 
as  these  decay  with  the  natural  decay  of  life,  it  is 
quite  impossible  for  a  mind  accustomed  to  deal 
with  realities  to  suppose  any  capacity  of  sensation 
as  surviving  when  the  machinery  of  our  natural 
existence  has  stopped."  [£".  Duhring :  der  Werth 
des  LebenSf  3d  edition,  pp.  48,  168.] 

Note  3,  page  12. 

The  philosophically  instructed  reader  will  notice 
that  I  have  all  along  been  placing  myself  at  the 
ordinary  dualistic  point  of  view  of  natural  science 
and  of  common  sense.  From  this  point  of  view 
mental  facts  like  feelings  are  made  of  one  kind  of 


Notes  57 

stuff  or  substance,  physical  facts  of  another.  An 
absolute  phenomenism,  not  believing  such  a  dual- 
ism to  be  ultimate,  may  possibly  end  by  solving 
some  of  the  problems  that  are  insoluble  when  pro- 
pounded in  dualistic  terms.  Meanwhile,  since  the 
physiological  objection  to  immortality  has  arisen 
on  the  ordinary  dualistic  plane  of  thought,  and 
since  absolute  phenomenism  has  as  yet  said  nothing 
articulate  enough  to  count  about  the  matter,  it  is 
proper  that  my  reply  to  the  objection  should  be 
expressed  in  dualistic  terms  —  leaving  me  free,  of 
course,  on  any  later  occasion  to  make  an  attempt; 
if  I  wish,  to  transcend  them  and  use  different  cate- 
gories. 

Now,  on  the  dualistic  assumption,  one  cannot  set 
more  than  two  really  different  sorts  of  dependence 
of  our  mind  on  our  brain :  Either 

(i)  The  brain  brings  into  being  the  very  stxiff 
of  consciousness  of  which  our  mind  consists ;  or 
else 

(2)  Consciousness  preexists  as  an  entity,  and  the 
various  brains  give  to  it  its  various  special  forms. 

If  supposition  2  be  the  true  one,  and  the  stuff  of 
mind  preexists,  there  are,  again,  only  two  ways  of 
conceiving  that  our  brain  confers  upon  it  the  spe- 
cifically human  form.     It  may  exist 

{a)  In  disseminated  particles  ;  and  then  our  brains 
are  organs  of  concentration,  organs  for  combining 


52  Notes 

and  massing  these  into  resultant  minds  of  personal 
form.     Or  it  may  exist 

{b)  In  vaster  unities  (absolute  'world- soul,'  or 
something  less) ;  and  then  our  brains  are  organs 
for  separating  it  into  parts  and  giving  them  finite 
form. 

There  ar"^  thus  three  possible  theories  of  the 
brain's  function,  and  no  more.  We  may  name 
them,  severally, — 

I.  The  theory  of  production ; 

2a.  The  theory  of  combination ; 

■zb.  The  theory  of  separation. 

In  the  text  of  the  lecture,  theory  number  2b  (spe- 
cified more  particularly  as  the  transmission-theory) 
is  defended  against  theory  number  i.  Theory  2a, 
otherwise  known  as  the  mind-dust  or  mind-stuff 
theory,  is  left  entirely  unnoticed  for  lack  of  time. 
I  also  leave  it  uncriticised  in  these  notes,  having 
already  considered  it,  as  fully  as  the  so-far  pub- 
lished forms  of  it  may  seem  to  call  for,  in  my 
work,  'The  Principles  of  Psychology,  New  York, 
Holt  &  Co.,  1892,  chapter  VI.  I  may  say  here, 
however,  that  Professor  W.  K.  Clifford,  one  of  the 
ablest  champions  of  the  combination-theory,  and 
originator  of  the  useful  term  '  mind-stuff,'  considers 
that  theory  incompatible  with  individual  immortal- 
ity, and  in  his  review  of  Stewart's  and  Tait's  book. 
The  Unseen  Universe,  thus  expresses  his  convic- 
tion :  — 


Notes  5^ 

"  The  laws  connecting  consciousness  with  changes 
in  the  brain  are  very  definite  and  precise,  and  their 
necessary  consequences  are  not  to  be  evaded.  .  .  . 
Consciousness  is  a  complex  thing  made  up  of  ele- 
ments, a  stream  of  feelings.  The  action  of  the 
brain  is  also  a  complex  thing  made  up  of  elements, 
a  stream  of  nerve-messages.  For  every  feeling  in 
consciousness  there  is  at  the  same  time  a  nerve- 
message  in  the  brain.  .  .  .  Consciousness  is  not  a 
simple  thing,  but  a  complex  ;  it  is  the  combination 
of  feelings  into  a  stream.  It  exists  at  the  same 
time  with  the  combination  of  nerve-messages  into 
a  stream.  If  individual  feeling  always  goes  with 
individual  nerve-message,  if  combination  or  stream 
of  feelings  always  goes  with  stream  of  nerve-mes- 
sages, does  it  not  follow  that,  when  the  stream  of 
nerve-messages  is  broken  up,  the  stream  of  feelings 
will  be  broken  up  also,  will  no  longer  form  a  con- 
sciousness ?  Does  it  not  follow  that,  when  the  mes- 
sages themselves  are  broken  up,  the  individual  feel- 
ings will  be  resolved  into  still  simpler  elements? 
The  force  of  this  evidence  is  not  to  be  weakened 
by  any  number  of  spiritual  bodies.  Inexorable 
facts  connect  our  consciousness  with  this  body  that 
we  know ;  and  that  not  merely  as  a  whole,  but  the 
parts  of  it  are  connected  severally  with  parts  of  our 
brain-action.  If  there  is  any  similar  connection 
with  a  spiritual  body,  it  only  follows  that  the  spirit- 


^4  Notes 

ual  body  must  die  at  the  same  time  with  the  natu- 
ral one."  \Lectjtres  and  Essays,  vol.  i.  p.  247-49. 
Compare  also  passages  of  similar  purport  in  vol.  ii. 
pp.  65-70.] 

Note  4,  page  13. 

The  theory  of  production,  or  materialistic  the- 
ory, seldom  ventures  to  formulate  itself  very  dis- 
tinctly. Perhaps  the  following  passage  from  Ca- 
banis  is  as  explicit  as  anything  one  can  find :  — 

"  To  acquire  a  just  idea  of  the  operations  from 
which  thought  results,  we  must  consider  the  brain 
as  a  particular  organ  specially  destined  to  produce 
it ;  just  as  the  stomach  and  intestines  are  destined 
to  operate  digestion,  the  liver  to  filter  bile,  the  pa- 
rotid and  maxillary  glands  to  prepare  the  salivary 
juices.  The  impressions,  arriving  in  the  brain, 
force  it  to  enter  into  activity ;  just  as  the  alimen- 
tary materials,  falling  into  the  stomach,  excite  it  to 
a  more  abundant  secretion  of  gastric  juice,  and  to 
the  movements  which  result  in  their  own  solution. 
The  function  proper  to  the  first  organ  is  that  of  re- 
ceiving \_percevoir\  each  particular  impression,  of 
attaching  signs  to  it,  of  combining  the  different  im- 
pressions, of  comparing  them  with  each  other,  of 
drawing  from  them  judgments  and  resolves ;  just 
as  the  function  of  the  other  organ  is  to  act  upon 
the  nutritive  substances  whose  presence  excites  it, 


Notes  ^^ 

to  dissolve  them,  and  to  assimilate  their  juices  to 
our  nature. 

"  Do  you  say  that  the  organic  movements  by 
which  the  brain  exercises  these  functions  are  un- 
known ?  I  reply  that  the  action  by  which  the 
nerves  of  the  stomach  determine  the  different  oper- 
ations which  constitute  digestion,  and  the  manner 
in  which  they  confer  so  active  a  solvent  power  upon 
the  gastric  juice,  are  equally  hidden  from  our  scru- 
tiny. We  see  the  food-materials  fall  into  this  vis- 
cus  with  their  own  proper  qualities ;  we  see  them 
emerge  with  new  qualities,  and  we  infer  that  the 
stomach  is  really  the  author  of  this  alteration. 
Similarly  we  see  the  impressions  reaching  the  brain 
by  the  intermediation  of  the  nerves ;  they  then  are 
isolated  and  without  coherence.  The  viscus  en- 
ters into  action ;  it  acts  upon  them,  and  soon  it 
emits  [renvoie']  them  metamorphosed  into  ideas, 
to  which  the  language  of  physiognomy  or  gesture, 
or  the  signs  of  speech  and  writing,  give  an  outward 
expression.  We  conclude,  then,  with  an  equal 
certitude,  that  the  brain  digests,  as  it  were,  the  im-^ 
pressions ;  that  it  performs  organically  the  secre- 
tion of  thought."  {Rapports  dn  Physique  et  di^ 
Moral,  8th  edition,  1844,  p.  137.] 

It  is  to  the  ambiguity  of  the  word  '  impression ' 
that  such  an  account  owes  whatever  plausibility  it 
may  seem  to  have.    More  recent  forms  of  the  pro- 


^6  Notes 

duction-theory  have  shown  a  tendency  to  liken 
thought  to  a  '  force '  which  the  brain  exerts,  or  to  a 
'  state '  into  which  it  passes.  Herbert  Spencer,  for 
instance,  writes :  — 

"  The  law  of  metamorphosis,  which  holds  among 
the  physical  forces,  holds  equally  between  them 
and  the  mental  forces.  .  .  .  How  this  metamor- 
phosis takes  place;  how  a  force  existing  as  mo- 
tion, heat,  or  light  can  become  a  mode  of  con- 
sciousness ;  how  it  is  possible  for  aerial  vibrations 
to  generate  the  sensation  we  call  sound,  or  for  the 
forces  liberated  by  chemical  changes  in  the  brain 
to  give  rise  to  emotion,  —  these  are  mysteries 
which  it  is  impossible  to  fathom.  But  they  are 
not  profounder  mysteries  than  the  transformations 
of  the  physical  forces  into  each  other."  IF't'rsf 
Principles,  2nd  Edition,  p.  217.] 

So  Biichner  says :  "  Thinking  must  be  regarded 
as  a  special  mode  of  general  natural  motion,  which 
is  as  characteristic  of  the  substance  of  the  central 
nervous  elements  as  the  motion  of  contraction  is 
of  the  nerve-substance,  or  the  motion  of  light  is  of 
the  universal-ether.  .  .  .  That  thinking  is  and  must 
be  a  mode  of  motion  is  not  merely  a  postulate  of 
logic,  but  a  psoposition  which  has  of  late  been 
demonstrated  experimentally.  .  .  .  Various  ingen- 
ious experiments  have  proved  that  the  swiftest 
thought  that  we  are  able  to  evolve  occupies  at  least 


Notes  ^y 

the  eighth  or  tenth  part  of  a  second."  {Force  and 
Matter,  New  York,  1891,  p.  241.] 

Heat  and  light,  being  modes  of  motion,  'phos- 
phorescence '  and  '  incandescence  '  are  phenomena 
to  which  consciousness  has  been  likened  by  the 
production-theory:  "As  one  sees  a  metallic  rod, 
placed  in  a  glowing  furnace,  gradually  heat  itself, 
and  —  as  the  undulations  of  the  caloric  grow  more 
and  more  frequent  —  pass  successively  from  the 
shades  of  bright  red  to  dark  red  («V),  to  white, 
and  develope,  as  its  temperature  rises,  heat  and 
light,  —  so  the  living  sensitive  cells,  in  presence  of 
the  incitations  that  solicit  them,  exalt  themselves 
progressively  as  to  their  most  interior  sensibility, 
enter  into  a  phase  of  erethism,  and  at  a  certain 
number  of  vibrations,  set  free  {digagenf)  pain  as  a 
physiological  expression  of  this  same  sensibility 
superheated  to  a  red-white."  [J.  Luys :  le  Cer- 
veau,  p.  91.] 

In  a  similar  vein  Mr.  Percival  Lowell  writes : 
"  When  we  have,  as  we  say,  an  idea,  what  happens 
itiside  of  us  is  probably  something  like  this :  the 
neural  current  of  molecular  change  passes  up  the 
nerves,  and  through  the  ganglia  reaches  at  last 
the  cortical  cells.  .  .  .  When  it  reaches  the  cor- 
tical cells,  it  finds  a  set  of  molecules  which  are  not 
so  accustomed  to  this  special  change.  The  cur- 
rent encounters  resistance,  and  in  overcoming  this 


^8  Notes 

resistance  it  causes  the  cells  to  glow.  This  white- 
heating  of  the  cells  we  call  consciousness.  Con- 
sciousness, in  short,  is  probably  nerve-glow."  [^Oc- 
cult  Japan,  Boston,  1895,  p.  311.] 

Note  5,  page  23. 

The  transmission  -  theory  connects  itself  very 
naturally  with  that  whole  tendency  of  thought 
known  as  transcendentalism.  Emerson,  for  exam- 
ple, writes :  "  We  lie  in  the  lap  of  immense  intelli- 
gence, which  makes  us  receivers  of  its  truth  ana 
organs  of  its  activity.  When  we  discern  justice. 
when  we  discern  truth,  we  do  nothing  of  ourselveS; 
but  allow  a  passage  to  its  beams."  \_Self-Relianct^ 
p.  56.]  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  identify  the  con- 
sciousness  postulated  in  the  lecture,  as  preexisting 
behind  the  scenes, with  the  Absolute  Mind  of  tran- 
scendental Idealism,  although,  indeed,  the  notion  of 
it  might  lead  in  that  direction.  The  absolute  Mind 
of  transcendental  Idealism  is  one  integral  Unit,  one 
single  World-mind.  For  the  purposes  of  my  lec- 
ture, however,  there  might  be  many  minds  behind 
the  scenes  as  well  as  one.  All  that  the  transmis- 
sion-theory absolutely  requires  is  that  they  should 
transcend  oiir  minds,  —  which  thus  come  from 
something  mental  that  pre-exists,  and  is  larger 
than  themselves. 


Notes  ^g 

Note  6,  page  24. 

Fechner's  conception  of  a  *  psycho  -  physical 
threshold  '  as  connected  with  his  '  wave-scheme  ' 
is  little  known  to  English  readers.  I  accordingly 
subjoin  it,  in  his  own  words,  abridged  :  — 

"  The  psychically  one  is  connected  with  a  physi- 
cally many :  the  physically  many  contract  psychi- 
cally into  a  one,  a  simple,  or  at  least  a  more  sim- 
ple. Otherwise  expressed :  the  psychically  unified 
and  simple  are  resultants  of  physical  multiplicity ; 
the  physically  manifold  gives  unified  or  simple  re- 
sults. .  .  . 

"  The  facts  which  are  grouped  together  under 
these  expressions,  and  which  give  them  their  mean- 
ing, are  as  follows  :  .  .  .  With  our  two  hemispheres 
we  think  singly;  with  the  identical  parts  of  our  two 
retinae  we  see  singly.  .  .  ,  The  simplest  sensation 
of  light  or  sound  in  us  is  connected  with  processes 
which,  since  they  are  started  and  kept  up  by  outer 
oscillations,  must  themselves  be  somehow  of  an 
oscillatory  nature,  although  we  are  wholly  unaware 
of  the  separate  phases  and  oscillations.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  certain,  then,  that  some  unified  or  sim- 
ple psychic  resultants  depend  on  physical  multipli- 
city. But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  certain 
that  the  multiplicities  of  the  physical  world  do  not 
always  combine  into  a  simple  psychical  resultant, 


6o  Notes 

—  no,  not  even  when  they  are  compounded  in  a 
single  bodily  system.  Whether  they  may  not  nev- 
ertheless combine  into  a  unified  resultant  is  a 
matter  for  opinion,  since  one  is  always  free  to  ask 
whether  the  entire  world,  as  such,  may  not  have 
some  unified  psychic  resultant.  But  of  any  such 
resultant  we  at  least  have  no  consciousness.  .  .  . 

"  For  brevity's  sake,  let  us  distinguish  psycho- 
physical continuity  and  discontinuity  from  each 
other.  Continuity,  let  us  say,  takes  place  so  far  as 
a  physical  manifold  gives  a  unified  or  simple  psy- 
chic resultant ;  discontinuity,  so  far  as  it  gives  a 
distinguishable  multiplicity  of  such  resultants.  In- 
asmuch, however,  as,  within  the  unity  of  a  more 
general  consciousness  or  phenomenon  of  conscious- 
ness, there  still  maybe  a  multiplicity  distinguished, 
the  continuity  of  a  more  general  consciousness 
does  not  exclude  the  discontinuity  of  particular 
phenomena. 

"One  of  the  most  important  problems  and  tasks 
of  Psycho-physics  now  is  this :  to  determine  the 
conditions  (Gesichtspunkte)  under  which  the  cases 
of  continuity  and  of  discontinuity  occur. 

"  Whence  comes  it  that  different  organisms  have 
separate  consciousnesses,  although  their  bodies 
are  just  as  much  connected  by  general  Nature 
as  the  parts  of  a  single  organism  are  with  each 
other,  and  these  latter  give  a  single  conscious  re- 


Notes  6 1 

sultant  ?  Of  course  we  can  say  that  the  connec- 
tion is  more  intimate  between  the  parts  of  an 
organism  than  between  the  organisms  of  Nature. 
But  what  do  we  mean  by  a  more  intimate  connec- 
tion ?  Can  an  absolute  difference  of  result  depend 
on  anything  so  relative  ?  And  does  not  Nature  as 
a  whole  show  as  strict  a  connection  as  any  organism 
does,  —  yea,  one  even  more  indissoluble  ?  And  the 
same  questions  come  up  within  each  organism. 
How  comes  it  that,  with  different  nerve-fibres  of 
touch  and  sight,  we  distinguish  different  space- 
points,  but  with  one  fibre  distinguish  nothing, 
although  the  different  fibres  are  connected  in  the 
brain  just  as  much  as  the  parts  are  in  the  single 
fibre?  We  may  again  call  the  latter  connection 
the  more  intimate,  but  then  the  same  sort  of  ques- 
tion will  arise  again. 

"  Unquestionably  the  problem  which  here  lies 
before  Psycho  -  physics  cannot  be  sharply  an- 
swered ;  but  we  may  establish  a  general  point  of 
view  for  its  treatment,  consistently  with  what  we 
laid  down  in  a  former  chapter  on  the  relations  of 
more  general  with  more  particular  phenomena  of 
consciousness." 

[The  earlier  passage  is  here  inserted  :]  "  The 
O  essential  principle  is  this:  That  human  psycho- 
'jN  physical  activity  must  exceed  a  certain  intensity 
^  for  any  waking  consciousness  at  all  to  occur,  and 


62  Notes 

that  during  the  waking  state  any  particular  specift 
cation  of  the  said  activity  (whether  spontaneous  or 
due  to  stimulation),  which  is  capable  of  occasion- 
ing a  particular  specification  of  consciousness,  must 
exceed  in  its  turn  a  certain  further  degree  of  inten- 
sity for  the  consciousness  actually  to  arise.  .  .  . 

"  This  state  of  things  (in  itself  a  mere  fact  need- 
ing no  picture)  may  be  made  clearer  by  an  image 
or  scheme,  and  also  more  concisely  spoken  of. 
Imagine  the  whole  psycho-physical  activity  of  man 
to  be  a  wave,  and  the  degree  of  this  activity  to  be 
symbolized  by  the  height  of  the  wave  above  a  hori- 
zontal basal  line  or  surface,  to  which  every  psycho- 
physically  active  point  contributes  an  ordinate.  .  .  . 
The  whole  form  and  evolution  of  the  conscious- 
ness will  then  depend  on  the  rising  and  faUing  of 
this  wave;  the  intensity  of  the  consciousness  at 
any  time  on  the  wave's  height  at  that  time;  and 
the  height  must  always  somewhere  exceed  a  certain 
limit,  which  we  will  call  a  threshold,  if  waking  con- 
sciousness is  to  exist  at  all. 

"  Let  us  call  this  wave  the  total  wave,  and  the 
threshold  in  question  t\\t  principal  threshold." 

[Since  our  various  states  of  consciousness  recur, 
some  in  long,  some  in  short  periods],  "we  may 
represent  such  a  long  period  as  that  of  the  slowly 
fluctuating  condition  of  our  general  wakefulness  and 
the  general  direction  of  our  attention  as  a  wave 


Notes  6^ 

that  slowly  changes  the  place  of  its  summit.  If  we 
call  this  the  ufider-wave,  then  the  movements  of 
shorter  period,  on  which  the  more  special  con- 
scious states  depend,  can  be  symbolized  by  wave- 
lets superposed  upon  the  under-wave,  and  we  can 
call  these  over-waves.  They  will  cause  all  sorts  of 
modifications  of  the  under-wave's  surface,  and  the 
total  wave  will  be  the  resultant  of  both  sets  of 
waves. 

"The  greater,  now,  the  strength  of  the  move- 
ments of  short  period,  the  amplitude  of  the  oscil- 
lations of  the  psycho-physical  activity,  the  higher 
will  the  crests  of  the  wavelets  that  represent  them 
rise  above,  and  the  lower  will  their  valleys  sink  be- 
low the  surface  of  the  under-wave  that  bears  them. 
And  these  heights  and  depressions  must  exceed  a 
certain  limit  of  quantity  which  we  may  call  the 
upper  threshold,  before  the  special  mental  state 
which  is  correlated  with  them  can  appear  in  con- 
sciousness "  [pp.  454-456]. 

"  So  far  now  as  we  symbolize  any  system  of  psy- 
cho-physical activity,  to  which  a  generally  unified  or 
principal  consciousness  corresponds,  by  the  image 
of  a  total  wave  rising  with  its  crest  above  a  certain 
*  threshold,'  we  have  a  means  of  schematizing  in  a 
single  diagram  the  physical  solidarity  of  all  these 
psycho-physical  systems  throughout  Nature,  to- 
gether with  their  pyscho  -  physical   discontinuity. 


64  Notes 

For  we  need  only  draw  all  the  waves  so  that  they 
run  into  each  other  below  the  threshold,  whilst 
above  it  they  appear  distinct,  as  in  the  figure  be- 
low. 

a  be 


"  In  this  figure  a,  b,  c  stand  for  three  organisms, 
or  rather  for  the  total  waves  of  psycho-physical  ac- 
tivity of  three  organisms,  whilst  A  B  represents  the 
threshold.  In  each  wave  the  part  that  rises  above 
the  threshold  is  an  integrated  thing,  and  is  con- 
nected with  a  single  consciousness.  Whatever  lies 
below  the  threshold,  being  unconscious,  separates 
the  conscious  crests,  although  it  is  still  the  means 
of  physical  connection. 

"  In  general  terms :  wherever  a  psycho-physical 
total  wave  is  continuous  with  itself  above  the 
threshold,  there  we  find  the  unity  or  identity  of  a 
consciousness,  inasmuch  z&  the  connection  of  the 
psychical  phenomena  which  correspond  to  the  parts 
of  the  wave  also  appears  in  consciousness.  When- 
ever, on  the  contrary,  total  waves  are  disconnected, 
or  connected  only  underneath  the  threshold,  the 
corresponding  consciousness  is  broken,  and  no  con- 
nection between  its  several  parts  appears.  More 
briefly :  consciousness  is  continuous  or  discontinu- 


Notes  6^ 

ous,  unified  or  discrete,  according  as  the  psycho- 
physical total  waves  that  subserve  it  are  them- 
selves continuous  or  discontinuous  above  the 
threshold.  .  .  . 

"  If,  in  the  diagram,  we  should  raise  the  entire 
line  of  waves  so  that  not  only  the  crests  but  the 
valleys  appeared  above  the  threshold,  then  these 
latter  would  appear  only  as  depressions  in  one 
great  continuous  wave  above  the  threshold,  and  the 
discontinuity  of  the  consciousness  would  be  con- 
verted into  continuity.  We  of  course  cannot  bring 
this  about.  We  might  also  squeeze  the  wave  to- 
gether so  that  the  valleys  should  be  pressed  up, 
and  the  crests  above  the  threshold  flow  into  a  line ; 
then  the  discretely-feeling  organisms  would  have 
become  a  singly  -  feeling  organism.  This,  again, 
Man  cannot  voluntarily  bring  about,  but  it  is 
brought  about  in  Man's  nature.  His  two  halves, 
the  right  one  and  the  left  one,  are  thus  united  ;  and 
the  number  of  segments  of  radiates  and  articulates 
show  that  more  than  two  parts  can  be  thus  psycho- 
physically  conjoined.  One  need  only  cut  them 
asunder,  i.  e.  interpolate  another  part  of  nature 
between  them  under  the  threshold,  and  they  breai: 
into  two  separately  conscious  beings."  .  .  .  \_Ele- 
mente  der  Psyfhophysik,    i860,   vol.  ii.  pp.  526- 

530.] 
One  sees  easily  how,  on  Fechner's  wave-scheme, 


66  Notes 

a  world-soul  may  be  expressed.  All  psycho-phy- 
sical activity  being  continuous  'below  the  thresh- 
old,' the  consciousness  might  also  become  contin- 
uous if  the  threshold  sank  low  enough  to  uncover 
all  the  waves.  The  threshold  throughout  nature 
in  general  is,  however,  very  high,  so  the  conscious- 
ness that  gets  over  it  is  of  the  discontinuous  form. 

Note  7,  page  25. 

See  the  long  series  of  articles  by  Mr.  Myers  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
beginning  in  the  third  volume  with  automatic  writ- 
ing, and  ending  in  the  latest  volumes  with  the 
higher  manifestations  of  knowledge  by  mediums. 
Mr.  Myers's  theory  of  the  whole  range  of  pheno- 
mena is,  that  our  normal  consciousness  is  in  con- 
tinuous connection  with  a  greater  consciousness 
of  which  we  do  not  know  the  extent,  and  to  which 
he  gives,  in  its  relation  to  the  particular  person, 
the  not  very  felicitous  name  —  though  no  better  one 
has  been  proposed — of  his  or  her  *  subliminal '  self . 

Note  8,  page  29. 

See  Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft,  second  edition, 
p.  809. 

Note  9,  page  29. 

I  subjoin  a  few  extracts  from  Mr.  Schiller's 
work :  "  Matter  is  an  admirably  calculated  machin- 


Notes  6y 

ery  for  regulating,  limiting,  and  restraining  the 
consciousness  which  it  encases.  ...  If  the  mate- 
rial encasement  be  coarse  and  simple,  as  in  the 
lower  organisms,  it  permits  only  a  little  intelligence 
to  permeate  through  it ;  if  it  is  delicate  and  com- 
plex, it  leaves  more  pores  and  exits,  as  it  were, 
for  the  manifestations  of  consciousness.  ...  On 
this  analogy,  then,  we  may  say  that  the  lower  ani- 
mals are  still  entranced  in  the  lower  stage  of  brute 
lethargy,  while  we  have  passed  into  the  higher 
phase  of  somnambulism,  which  already  permits  us 
strange  glimpses  of  a  lucidity  that  divines  the  real- 
ities of  a  transcendent  world.  And  this  gives  the 
final  answer  to  Materialism :  it  consists  in  showing 
in  detail  .  .  .  that  Materialism  is  a  hysteron  prote- 
ron,  a  putting  of  the  cart  before  the  horse,  which 
may  be  rectified  by  just  inverting  the  connection 
between  Matter  and  Consciousness.  Matter  is  not 
that  which  produces  Consciousness,  but  that  which 
limits  it,  and  confines  its  intensity  within  certain 
limits :  material  organization  does  not  construct 
consciousness  out  of  arrangements  of  atoms,  but 
contracts  its  manifestation  within  the  sphere  which 
it  permits.  This  explanation  .  .  .  admits  the  con- 
nection of  Matter  and  Consciousness,  but  contends 
that  the  course  of  interpretation  must  proceed  in 
the  contrary  direction.  Thus  it  will  fit  the  facts 
alleged  in  favor  of  Materialism  equally  well,  be- 


68  Notes 

sides  enabling  us  to  understand  facts  which  Mate- 
rialism rejected  as  '  supernatural.'  It  explains  the 
lower  by  the  higher,  Matter  by  Spirit,  instead  of 
vice  versa,  and  thereby  attains  to  an  explanation 
which  is  ultimately  tenable,  instead  of  one  which 
is  ultimately  absurd.  And  it  is  an  explanation  the 
possibility  of  which  no  evidence  in  favor  of  Mate- 
rialism can  possibly  affect.  For  if,  e.  g.,  a  man 
loses  consciousness  as  soon  as  his  brain  is  injured, 
it  is  clearly  as  good  an  explanation  to  say  the 
injury  to  the  brain  destroyed  the  mechanism  by 
which  the  manifestation  of  the  consciousness  was 
rendered  possible,  as  to  say  that  it  destroyed  the 
seat  of  consciousness.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  facts  which  the  former  theory  suits  far  better. 
If,  e.g.,  as  sometimes  happens,  the  man,  after  a 
time,  more  or  less,  recovers  the  faculties  of  which 
the  injury  to  his  brain  had  deprived  him,  and  that 
not  in  consequence  of  a  renewal  of  the  injured  part, 
but  in  consequence  of  the  inhibited  functions  being 
performed  by  the  vicarious  action  of  other  parts, 
the  easiest  explanation  certainly  is  that,  after  a 
time,  consciousness  constitutes  the  remaining  parts 
into  a  mechanism  capable  of  acting  as  a  substitute 
for  the  lost  parts.  And  again,  if  the  body  is  a  me- 
chanism for  inhibiting  consciousness,  for  prevent- 
ing the  full  powers  of  the  Ego  from  being  prema- 
turely actualized,  it  will  be  necessary  to  invert  also 


Notes  6g 

our  ordinary  ideas  on  the  subject  of  memory,  and 
to  account  for  forgetfulness  instead  of  for  mem- 
ory. It  will  be  during  life  that  we  drink  the  bitter 
cup  of  Lethe,  it  will  be  with  our  brain  that  we  are 
enabled  to  forget.  And  this  will  serve  to  explain 
not  only  the  extraordinary  memories  of  the  drown- 
ing and  the  dying  generally,  but  also  the  curious 
hints  which  experimental  psychology  occasionally 
affords  us  that  nothing  is  ever  forgotten  wholly 
and  beyond  recall."  [^Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  Lon- 
don, Swan  Sonnenschein,  1891,  p.  293  ff.] 

Mr.  Schiller's  conception  is  much  more  com- 
plex in  its  relations  than  the  simple  '  theory  of 
transmission '  postulated  in  my  lecture,  and  to  do 
justice  to  it  the  reader  should  consult  the  original 
work. 

Note  10,  page  39. 

I  beg  the  reader  to  peruse  R.  L.  Stevenson's 
magnificent  little  essay  entitled  '  The  Lantern 
Bearers,'  reprinted  in  the  collection  entitled  Across 
the  Plains.  The  truth  is  that  we  are  doomed,  by 
the  fact  that  we  are  practical  beings  with  very 
limited  tasks  to  attend  to,  and  special  ideals  to 
look  after,  to  be  absolutely  blind  and  insensible 
to  the  inner  feelings,  and  to  the  whole  inner  sig- 
nificance of  lives  that  are  different  from  our  own. 
Our  opinion  of   the  worth  of  such  lives  is  abso- 


JO  Notes 

lutely  wide  of  the  mark,  and  unfit  to  be  counted  at 
all. 

Note  ii,  page  41. 

W.   Wundt :   System  der  Philosophie,   Leipzig, 
Engelmann,  1889,  p.  315. 


THE  END. 


CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS    U.  S.  ; 

ELECTROTYPED  AND  PRINTED  BY 

H.  O.  HOUGHTON  AND  CO. 


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